A thought on Concrete Revolutio and its exploration of heroism (and My Hero Academia's too)

July 4, 2016

I rambled a bit about this on Twitter, but I want to put this down
in a more durable (and slightly longer form). So:

@thatcks:
An obvious thesis: I think it matters for Concrete Revolutio that the
usual Japanese phrase for 'hero' is apparently 'ally of justice'.

This is 'hero' in the sense of (super)hero, which is what the characters
in Concrete Revolutio are. I don't know enough to know if Japanese has
a single word that directly maps to this (English) concept, but according
to this blog entry on ConRevo translations
the Japanese phrase the show uses for this concept is seigi no mikata,
which literally means 'ally of justice'.

Continuing from Twitter:

This puts a stronger spin on Concrete Revolutio's constant
interrogation of what justice is (and what it means to be its ally).
Characters like Jiro care so much about justice because, well, when
they think of themselves as heroes they're literally allies of justice.
If Jiro (or anyone) cannot see what justice is or where it lies, they
cannot be the heroes that they want to be and imagine themselves as.

Let me rephrase that to be clearer. When ConRevo's characters think and
worry about this, they're of course thinking in their native language,
using their native terminology. So when Jiro thinks about being a hero,
he literally thinking about being an 'ally of justice', since that's the
term and phrase he uses for it. Naturally what you think of yourself as
influences what you think about and what your concerns are, so the very
term the characters use in ConRevo makes them worry about what justice
is (and what it means to be an ally of it). A hero must be 'heroic',
whatever that is, but in Western (super)hero works this need not have
much to do with justice; however, an 'ally of justice' must be doing
things that are on the side of justice, wherever that is. And if you
wind up not being on the side of justice, your self-image can fall apart;
after all, how can you call yourself an ally of justice any more?

This gives various characters in CR quite strong reasons to cling
grimly to their own visions of what justice is, even when it disagrees
with other people or leads them to absurd results. I imagine that it
also drives characters to want simple, clear definitions that they can
follow, instead of messy complicated ones that are very situational and
unclear. If you can't see where justice is, how can you know what to do
in order to be an ally of justice? Maybe if you act, you're actually
working against justice and so being a villain.

A thought: both Concrete Revolutio and My Hero Academia are kind of
asking the same question but with totally different viewpoints on it.
And I think that the difference between ConRevo and MHA comes down to
the term they use for what it is they're asking about.
In that both ConRevo and MHA are asking 'what is it that makes you a
hero/how do you be a hero', but MHA uses 'hero' & CR 'ally of justice'.
So Concrete Revolutio interrogates what justice is, while My Hero
Academia asks what is at the core of heroism (vs power & capability).

As far as I can remember from watching it, Boku no Hero Academia
consistently used the English 'hero' for what its characters are,
not the Japanese 'seigi no mikata' (it even put 'hero' in its
Japanese title). One of the clear themes in MHA is that Midoriya
(and true heroes in general) are defined by their willingness to
act even without the surety of power and conversely that power alone
doesn't make you a hero (Bakugo is the poster child of this (also)). Midoriya
is not a hero because he has power, he's a hero because he selflessly
throws himself into situations to help others who need it (starting with
his climactic moment in episode 2).

So, as I see it, both Concrete Revolutio and My Hero Academia have
as a theme the question of 'what does it mean to be a hero', except
that because they use different terms for it they wind up exploring the
question from quite different directions. MHA uses the English 'hero'
and winds up approaching it in a way that's very natural to Western
audiences. Concrete Revolutio uses the Japanese 'ally of justice' and so
winds up exploring the question of what justice is; is it adherence to a
law, or to morality, or to the humanity of those you're helping, or what?